Designing Successful Governance Groups: Lessons for Leaders from Real-World Examples

Abstract

In January 2015, the Global Network of Internet & Society Research Centers (NoC) published the results of a globally coordinated, independent academic research project exploring multistakeholder governance models. Facilitated by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the work evaluated a wide range of governance groups with the goal of contributing meaningfully to the current debate around the future of the Internet governance ecosystem. The report, entitled Multistakeholder as Governance Groups: Observations From Case Studies, included twelve case studies of real-world governance structures from around the world and from both inside and outside the sphere of Internet governance. The report also included a synthesis paper, which drew from the case studies lessons that challenged conventional thinking with respect to the formation, operation, and critical success factors of governance groups. Through its work, the Network of Centers hopes to demonstrate new strategies and approaches for academia regarding its roles in research, facilitation and convening, and education in and communication about the Internet age. This ambition includes creating outputs that are useful, actionable, and timely for policymakers and stakeholders. In that spirit, this document is intended to help translate our original report into a form useful for those creating, convening, or leading governance groups. It is our goal that this document can provide an operational starting place for those who wish to learn more about some of the components critical to the success of a governance group. The original report goes into far greater depth on both the details of the case studies and the lessons learned from them, whereas this document highlights only a few of the points most relevant for operationalizing the findings of the full report.